


Seagulls and Salt Water

by weaksauce



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, dirkjake - Freeform, long distance, meddling?, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-05-30 16:18:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15100475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weaksauce/pseuds/weaksauce
Summary: A night's events in Dirk's mid-ocean apartment.





	Seagulls and Salt Water

Nights are always the hardest. Sheets and clothes pick up the humidity and won't let go, and the ratio of air to water around you has shifted so much that it's a surprise you haven't evolutionally developed gills yet. The warm, moist darkness enveloping you makes you feel like Jonah, or probably more accurately Pinocchio, being swallowed whole by some giant and uncaring whale.

You slide open the salt-crusted window with some effort, looking out at a sea full of scattered stardust. The ghost reflections of the moon and pinpoint stars undulate with the ocean, distorted. There is nothing else. Just shiny blackness, a fishy smell, a frequent squawking sound, and you. You suppose that it's a profoundly lonely feeling, but it's the only thing you've ever known; so you guess you could say that you're... not used to it, but actively familiar with it.

You shut the window before the smell of salt and fish or a rogue seagull seize the opportunity to invade your room. A huff of air escapes you and is promptly blown away by one of three industrial fans as you fall back onto your bed. Your clothes and hair flutter in the artificial breeze, but the air that comes out isn't any less humid. It does little to relieve the film of sweat and evaporated ocean water already appearing on your skin, making it pink and hot to the touch. You'll have to wait around all night for daybreak for the sun to take care of that for you, but the sun brings along a whole new set of millennia-old unsolvable problems.

That massive waste of time called sleep tugs at your eyelids, and unwilling to succumb yet, you sit up abruptly, flipping on the computer in an outpour of blue-white light. The room is illuminated faintly, and your shadow looms large behind you. You can feel the leather of the computer chair sticking tepidly to the backs of your pasty boxer-clad legs in a way that only humidity-moist leather can. The hair at the nape of your neck stands up from a tingly combination of the rush of the computer's bloom of informative light and one of the fans blowing on it in that special way that feels like you imagine human breath would.

The internet is a microcosm of the apocalyptic water world surrounding you, and you deftly navigate its labyrinth of links. Using a search engine like Google, as you know from your research that they did in the past, is no longer possible. Years of lack of maintenance has caused most sites to be corroded, so you have to carefully pick your way through like a game of minesweeper. You've learned how to navigate the tricky terrain of the internet well enough, sometimes with Roxy's help with decryption of certain protected sites like those including information about government secrets that no longer hold any meaning. The AR delights in pointing out that it could help you, but collaborating with Roxy on your internet deep dives keeps both of you busy and on your toes.

A seizure-inducing small flashing image at the bottom of the screen lets you know that you have a message. Seeing that it's from your autoresponder, you ignore it. There are more pressing matters right now like trying to distract yourself from your blunders of the day. You're sure the AR will provide no help with that.

The image blinks again, faster. Jesus, it must be altering the programming of the computer to make you notice it. You continue artfully dodging the blinking, eyes lost in your bro's site, which you faithfully upkeep, even though there is no web traffic. You couldn't stand the thought of it disintegrating into a jumbled mess of codes like the other centuries-old sites. After a quick check in, you decide to browse a pizza website, pondering the awkward social politics of calling someone to deliver a pizza to your house.

 _Ping, ping, ping!_ The AR turns on the sound of your computer to alert you to its messages. You press the mute button with a heavy middle finger, glancing at the small red light from the webcam on your monitor. The messages stop for a moment, and suddenly the page you're browsing flickers and blinks out of existence.

The AR knows that you hate when it erases websites like that; these time-weathered articles are some of the last relics of 21st century Earth. You glance at the shades on the small table beside your bed and then proceed to diligently ignore them. Rewarding it after that stunt is just going to inspire more of the same antics in the future.

You decide to check on your Derse self for a moment. You're always able to hear the thoughts of both your waking self and your dream self, but controlling the bodies of both at the same time is another matter. You're still working on perfecting that.

There's a brief transition period while you metaphorically turn the dial to tune into the space between Earth and Derse and allow a slippery feeling and gravity to coax you into your Derse body gently. In the transition period, you can feel both the sweat-slick computer chair and the cool smoothness of a hard bed made of some kind of moonrock. You're trying to train your mind to extend this slippery transition period as long as you can, but you can feel your subconscious trying to settle into just one body at once as a reaction to the discomfort of it. You manage to hold on to this feeling for what feels like a good thirty minutes this time, but when you try to sit up on Derse, grasp on your Earth body slips out of your hands like a wet piece of soap.

You look around the room and decide to go out for a quick round of reconnaissance before sliding back into your Earth body. The Earth body's thoughts mingle and permeate somewhat messily through the thoughts of this body, but its quite easy to distinguish the origin of thoughts about the AR's jeering.

You stealthily head out the window, cool breeze against your face a relief after the heat of the night on Earth. Your hair whips back behind you as you fly quickly, darting around the roofs of buildings and avoiding notice. You continue in this manner for a while. You've recently found out where you think the headquarters of a small rebel faction might be hiding, and you're sure to check that out and listen in on the major happenings of uprising on Derse before heading back to the purple version of your room. You're careful to lie down in exactly the same position you always do before tuning back in on Earth.

As you navigate the familiar slippage surrounding the swapping of physical control from your Derse body to your Earth body, you're able to hold on for even longer this time. The sensation of lying on the slab bed lingers as you notice your Earth self has passed out face-first onto the keyboard. Shit. You're sure the AR is going to get on your case about this little incident. Still in control of your dream self, you succeed in lifting your waking self's head off the keyboard. It feels hotter than usual on Earth, and when you turn your attention to the fans, the bodily connection to your slab-bed-lying-self is broken.

There's no whirring sound, fan blades all stopped. Your monitor has also gone black, and it seems like the electricity is off. Earlier you'd mentioned that the fans just blew around the humidity, but you now feel like you've been too hard on them. Without the fans, your room is unbearably hot. You slide off your chair, knees hitting the rough carpet under your desk as you examine the surge protector for the source of the power outage. As your hand touches the plastic, you think of a much more likely culprit. Looks like it's time to stop ignoring it.

You stand up, walking over to your bedside table and looking skeptically at your shrunken reflection in the triangular shiny black plastic sitting there. You consider your options one more time before deciding to put on the shades.

A barrage of text assaults your eyes. You skim to the end as you walk toward your door.

TT: You literally just escaped to Derse. You know how I can tell? Yeah, that's right. It's because your face is smushed against your keyboard. You're really not as in control of both bodies as you think. Gotta work on that, bro.  
TT: Dude. This is serious stuff. Not ignoring me and facing your problems would probably be the wise choice right now.  
TT: Let’s see if this gets your attention. Pretty sure it will. Because after the computer is taken out of the equation and the room heats up, all that's left is me. You're totally going to start talking to me again in 10... 9... 8... 7...  
TT: And here you come walking over. How did I know? Oh, yeah. Right. I'm literally you.

TT: Yeah, you got my attention. Now what are you going to do with it?

TT: Obviously use it to be a helpful AI who manages your affairs and generally doesn't get nearly enough credit for it.

TT: Yeah, sure. What's your big news?

TT: Can't a guy's autoresponder just want to engage in a friendly conversation to update the user about his current relationships and develop strategies on how to win certain affinities?

Your humidity-rusted door hinges let out a high-pitched scream of protest. You oil them nearly every goddamn day, but that doesn't stop them from being rusty. You think about welding new ones as you begin the hike up some stairs in search of the circuit breaker at the top of the stairs to get your fans and computer working again.

TT: Cut the bullshit.

TT: There's an incoming large storm. It's scheduled for impact with this area in approximately two hours, and I would like to recommend barricading windows, bringing in any robots and electrically powered devices located outside, as well as taking shelter immediately.  
TT: …You should be aware that I'm not the biggest fan of that particular part of my coding, Dirk.

TT: The part where you have to cut the bullshit when I tell you to and actually be straightforward? Yeah, I know I would hate that. And as you like to make me painfully aware, you are literally me.

TT: But I did have other news as well.

TT: And what was that?

You open the little box on the wall of the stair's landing, its hinges squeaking predictably as you scan over the multiple plastic switches connected to a rainbow of wires.

TT: It's the red one.

You flip the small black switch connected to a blue wire: the main power.

TT: Was that the pressing issue? You wanting me to flip the red switch, overload the grid, and blow up my computer? Not too cool, man... But I actually have something to ask you.

TT: No, that was not the pressing issue. And, you just asked me two things, but yes?

TT: Let’s put a pin in the pressing issue for a second. How did you turn off the power? I suspect you pulled up a million windows on my computer all at once to make it overheat and trigger the circuit to break?

TT: Good guess, but no. I traveled through the wires like a ninja, even doing the fuckin' running thing with my cyber arms flailing wildly behind me, allowing me to reach insane top speeds as I went into the fans and your TV.  
TT: The fans are on the same power strip as the computer, so I made the fans blow around so hard that they were literally about to take off like little helicopters, which didn't just flip the circuit breaker, but actually exploded the power strip.  
TT: Then I superheated the TV by downloading a ton of programs on it via wifi and running them remotely, which flipped the circuit breaker.

TT: That's really uncool.

TT: It seems like you're impressed.

TT: A little. Though I doubt that you can really control the fans. I think the main means of your operation were the computer and the TV.

TT: Guess you'll never know because you were in dreamland when it happened. Do you want to know the big news yet?

TT: Sure.

TT: Alright. Jane is continuing to be friendly, but it seems that she has a romantic interest in Jake. We should really look into that. Maybe make a plan to block any budding feelings.  
TT: I was thinking about trying to intercept Jake's messages on the way to her and try to make it appear that he's ignoring her to give you a leg up on the competition.  
TT: All that would require is a momentary shut down of Jake's internet connection and a hostile takeover of his client. I'm sure his password is something goofily lovable and ridiculous like "gunsarecool."

TT: You know I'm going to say no to all of your subpar plots to interfere in my friends' love lives.

TT: Ok, what about contacting Jake more? Or carefully orchestrating your conversations so that they're timed in a way that interrupts those between Jane and him?

TT: I might try the first one. If I have time.

TT: Great. I'll contact him for you. Reach out like a concerned lover.

TT: No, I'll talk to him when I have time. Leave Jake alone for the time being. He's kind of becoming distrustful of you, and as a byproduct, me.

TT: Do you have time right now?

TT: ...You've been talking to him this whole time, haven't you?

timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

golgothasTerror [GT] started pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

GT: Well confound it if it isnt those damned shades again!

TT: Hey, it's me.

GT: No i just used your own blasted coding against you to find out that its not the real dirk! Precisely five goshdarned seconds ago!

TT: The AR didn't let me know that it was talking to you. But it connected me just now.

GT: Im very suspicious of your transparent antics ar! I caught wind of your conniving schemes long ago and you cant fool me anymore!!

TT: Webcam?

Jake's face icon pops up in the corner of your monitor, grinning at you. You hastily click the green button to accept the call... Fuck. You hadn't actually thought about how you look before arranging this. You quickly duck your head out of frame and run a hand through your hair before reappearing. Your eyes dart to Jake's real, live, moving face, speckled by the occasional staticky interference that’s to be expected when communicating across multiple thousands of miles and hundreds of years. His tan skin is tinted an off-gray by your shades, and his protruding teeth are all visible as he grins the most genuine grin at you. Which promptly drops and is replaced by mild surprise. He's staring at you.

"What," you say mildly incredulously. You glance at the side of the screen reflecting you and your surroundings and realize that you're not wearing a shirt. Pull this off as ironic or somewhat awkwardly cover up?

TT: Nice plan. He's totally checking out your pecs.

TT: Shut up.

You choose neither of the two options you presented yourself with earlier, opting instead for honesty. "It's hot as hell here... But I'll put on a shirt if it's distracting."

TT: Distracting? You sound full of yourself.

"No, that's quite alright! I'm just tickled pink that it's actually you I'm dealing with, and not your goshfriggin' sunglasses!" says Jake, picking up his grin where he left off, but there's something else on his face.

TT: He's head over heels in lust with you.

You decide ignoring the AR once more is the best course of action at this point. Your overcomplicated thoughts and steady stream of mildly panicked emotions are already enough to deal with when interacting with Jake.

"Yeah, it's really me. Shit, we haven't talked like this in a while.”

"Yeah, it has been a while. I guess both of us were rather busy! What's the 411 there?" You peel your eyes off his face and to his surroundings, seeing the familiar decor of his room. Skulls and DVDs litter the shelves behind him, and posters are plastered skewedly on the walls. He must be sitting in a chair at the desk in front of his bed. His chin is propped up by one hand, fingers curled slightly around his cheek and elbow resting on the desk below. His eyes are half-lidded with sleep, and he's wearing his childish green and white striped pajamas, the top few buttons open to reveal a sliver of his tan chest.

You smile inwardly at the mention of '411.' You'd seen the number referenced in a book once, and the two of you had had a lengthy conversation about the practicality of dialing a phone number to get information, potential issues of privacy, and just how strange (you remember him, in a regular show of English-level syllable extension, using the term "positively baffling") it was that it was something that could be done on the same Earth that the two of you live on, in some timeline, at some point in its history.

"Nothing really interesting on my end. There is a huge, defcon-1 level super typhoon thing kind of shittily looming two hours in the future, though."

“A storm? Well, shucks. I suppose you need to go prepare then?” He looks a little disappointed, and his disappointment at seeing you go fills you with some kind of strange hope for your relationship. This hope born of Jake’s disappointment readily and easily overtakes your mind with guilt. What kind of person gets excited about romantic prospects from disappointing someone else?

“Nah, there are tons of storms here all the time, seeing as it’s literally the middle of the ocean. I’ll just put down the metal shutter things I have. Internet connection might get a bit spotty.”

“You don’t say? Well, then!” he smiles at you, head lifting out of his palm as he sits up straighter. His glasses reflect the smaller image of you trapped in his computer screen back at you, and in the dark dawn, it’s hard to see his eyes. “How long would you say we have to talk this time?”

You feel bad about it, but you do usually need to impose time limits on your chats because of how busy you are. That being said, Jake is usually busy with his adventuring as well. Video chatting isn’t a viable option most of the time, but seeing as this is time that you use for sleeping, you guess that you could just forego sleep for tonight and budget it on Jake instead.

“All the time in the world,” you say.

“Really?” he asks, cocking his head to one side adorably. Jesus, Jake.

“Yeah,” you say. You’re sure he doesn’t know that this is the time you normally sleep. Time zones and the dynamics of time between your centuries seem to confuse him a little. “Or at least the next two hours until the storm of impending doom fucks up the internet connection irreparably… Not that I’m implying we have to talk for two hours if you have other things to do.” 

TT: Wow, smooth one. I don’t even want to know what kind of emotion-clogged bullshit is going on in your stupid human head right now.

“In that case, would you mind taking off the friggin' AR goggles for a minute? It’s just kind of distracting knowing that it’s listening to our conversation.”

"You know, if it doesn't see us interact, it won't learn how to better replicate my words and actions," you point out.

Jake gives you a look in return, and it's probably the most stern-faced you've ever seen him.

TT: Don't take me off. I want to see where this goes.

“Shades off, got it," you say, taking your shades-entrapped AR off and placing it neatly on the desk next to the monitor. Without turning your head, you glance hesitantly back up at Jake.

Jake continues to look at you, and you know what he wants.

"Other room, got it," you say, grabbing the shades in one fist and walking briskly to the living room. You toss them with a combination of loving and loathing onto the plush sofa, giving them one last look before going back to your room to talk to Jake. You know from experience that he's going to ask you to close the door behind you to block the sounds of your furtive conversation from the AR, so you close it preemptively. The leather of your computer chair squeaks under your sweaty thighs as you sit, and you realize two things in quick succession. 1. That your room is actively in the process of becoming a sauna because you still haven't flipped the fans back on, and 2. that you just walked in front of the webcam wearing nothing but your boxers.

You can see Jake's cheeks redden visibly as you fiddle with your fingers out of his line of sight under the desk.

"It's in the living room now, and I shut the door already," you say, turning the webcam to face the door briefly to expressly prove your point. That’s the only reason. You also may use this momentary pause in Jake’s gaze to simultaneously collect yourself and mentally curse yourself for being a big enough waste of space to just expose yourself to him like an exhibitionist. He’s probably starting to believe all of the aggressive come-ons of the AR as gospel.

"You don't need to tur-- I believed you anyway! And thanks. That's a relief!" Jake says as you turn the monitor back to face yourself.

"What did the AR misconstrue about me this time? I know that its manners leave a lot to be desired, and I guess you already know this, but I really appreciate that you put up with it." Your hand drifts to the switch of the closest fan as your talking, and you deftly turn it on. Sweet, coolish-but-still-humid air blows out at you, and you close your eyes for a moment in the bliss of it. You open them again languidly.

"Well... I uh... Could we not talk about what was said between the two of us? Frankly, I'm a little embarrassed about it. It uh... pretended to be you. Usually, I can manage to make out that it's not because it's really just like you when you're in an awful mood. Not to mention it says 'it seems' too much, uses lots of stupid supercomputer percentages, and always says the same thing when you ask about the AR. But today it was pretty convincing."

“Right before talking, I told it to stop bothering you so much. I mean, unless I'm actually busy and you contact me first. So, let me know if it keeps that shit up."

"Yeah, okay. You know, I really don't mind talking to it! It's just when it pretends to be you that really gets my goat." Jake lets out a little sigh, letting his hand slip away from his face and below the camera's view.

"I'm working on that."

"Thanks," he says, smiling. "If anyone can put that thing in its place, it would probably be you. I mean, you managed to make a sentient AI in the first place, and that alone is an indubitably impressive feat."

"Nah, it's not actually as complicated as it sounds. Almost anyone could probably do it, given they had a captcha of their brain lying around and a massive down time deficit that needed dealing with."

"Give yourself some credit! I think you're particularly well-suited for the task."

“Even so, it didn't exactly work out in anyone's favor, did it? I created a sentient version of my 13-year-old self that’s bound to go insane from also being a supercomputer and only having four people to interact with, one of whom is me."

Jake looks a little concerned at this realization. "Dirk, are you not fond of the AR? I always thought that you were chums who make some kind of wild plans of action and chat together. That's the impression it gave me, anyway."

Shit. After years of teasing around the subject about your hate for the AR, it looks like Jake wants some solid facts on the matter. This conversation is pretty much 100% guaranteed to lead in an unsavory direction or force you to face one of your major emotional roadblocks at some point or another. “Do you want the honest truth of how I feel about the thing?"

"Of course!”

Here goes. No turning back on this winding trail of self-hate that will probably just end up making Jake uncomfortable as you delve into the depths of your emotions and insecurities. Literally no one likes listening to their friends read out the fucking list of their insecurities. But making Jake moderately uncomfortable is the least of your problems right now. Making him want to fix it is the real issue. At this point, this probably in some way emotionally-manipulative clingy bullshit-fest has already started. This shit’s gonna be like some kind of demented Sea World in which the abused fish on show is your emotional state, and Jake is in the splash zone without a poncho.

"I fuckin' hate it."

You can't see Jake's eyes because of the reflection of the computer's bright light, but you see his lips pull down at the corners like they do when he's upset about something. "I... never would have realized that. I always wanted to support you in your goals to make it, but I didn't know that you hated it... Would I be prying in asking why?” Fuck. You’ll take any out at this point. God can smite you down. Where is that storm?

"No, I don’t really consider any of your questions to be prying.”

A message icon flashes in the corner of the monitor, bright and garish. You reluctantly click it.

TT: God, look at you just relishing so fuckin’ hard that Jake is giving you attention. It’s kind of embarrassing, like, how much you’re relishing this right now, dude. Also, you know I’m still listening, right?

TT: Yes, I'm aware.

You type quietly and keep your eyes on Jake so that he doesn't get suspicious. Without the glasses, the AR can’t see what’s happening on the screen, but due to its programming which allows it to operate through all wifi-enabled devices in your apartment, it can still hear your conversation. You’ve turned off its control over the web chatting application that you’re now using, more because the AR has no reason to use it than for privacy. However, it still has access to the computer’s audio inputs and outputs.

Jake, to your knowledge, doesn’t know that the AR can hear your conversations if your glasses are out of the room, and you let him operate under the assumption of privacy for now. If it were harassing him about your conversations, you wouldn’t hesitate to turn off its access to the audio. But because the AR knows that revealing its privies to Jake would result in no longer being able to listen in, it sticks to harassing you about your romantic failings instead—which is a slightly annoying, but fine. Your hope is that it’s taking notes about how to be more like you when interacting with Jake, failings and all. That being said, you’re not actually sure how vested the AR is in being a genuine imitation anymore; it has undoubtedly outgrown its metaphorical britches.

TT: Alright, tell him how you really feel about me. Unless you're too scared to do it.

TT: Jesus, this teenage bully schtick is fucking immature. Even for my thirteen-year-old self.

TT: Do it, do it, do it.

TT: First, I have one question for you.

TT: Do you?

TT: Are you actively, even passively, trying to be more like me? In any capacity, are you trying to make your interactions more lifelike, more representative of how I would respond?

TT: I think we both know that I stopped playing the role of auto responder a long time ago. But that doesn't mean that I don't take an active interest in you. What you're really doing here is asking me if you should turn off the audio so that I can't hear your conversation with Jake. My answer to that would be a resounding, "Fuck no."

TT: ...  
TT: Why?

TT: Like I said, I'm interested in your life.

TT: Bullshit.

TT: Dirk, my life quite literally revolves around yours. Shutting me out only serves the function of leaving me alone in a virtual wasteland as I... just kind of disintegrate into nothing, I guess. I'll probably go to wherever those websites go when they're erased, or even worse, just be left in an abyss.  
TT: Hell, your bro at least left you a computer and food before leaving you alone in this shitty physical wasteland. Though I guess you'll acknowledge this later, I know for a fact that you're uniquely well-equipped to realize when something is developing a soul, and I know that you're not cruel enough to leave me to rot.

TT: I see.

TT: I knew you'd come aro

You close the chat window abruptly before you finish reading the message and turn off the AR's control of your computer's audio. A small sigh detaches itself from where it had been hiding in your lungs and crawls out of your mouth laboriously. It's not relief. You're not quite sure what this feeling is. It is, however, as is the case with most of your emotions, simultaneously overwhelming and unavailable to anyone but yourself.

"Dirk... Are you... alright?" The sun has risen through the window in front of him, its warm brightness cancelling out the cool wash of the computer screen and forcing your reflection out of his glasses. Jake's impossibly green eyes are brimming with concern.

"Yeah, of course," you say like you hadn't just faced an existential crisis using an Al replica of yourself as a proxy.

"Who on Earth were you typing to?" he asks, concern replaced with curiosity.

You guess that your typing had gotten a little louder and more drawn out than you intended. "You're, uh... Not going to like the answer to that."

"Oh, kerfuffle! Was it that zany alien chap and his outrageous demands?" he asks, curiosity now becoming anger. Jake really does wear his heart on his sleeve--all of his emotions out in the open and accessible to others. You wonder if it would be cathartic to live that way.

"No, worse," you say. And you're not purposely being cryptic or dragging this out. You genuinely just don't want to talk about it, but practically forcing him to guess is twisting this emotionally-wrenching interaction into some kind of idiotic game.

"Uh... There's no one worse than that guy! The scum of the Earth... er, universe, I suppose. But if I have to wager a guess, would I be wrong in going out on a limb and saying that it was the AR?"

You've really underestimated Jake. You actually didn't expect him to guess that it was the AR so quickly, as he seemed to assume that it was tied to the shades which are currently on the sofa in the living room. You're frankly a little surprised, but you're also a little guilty about being surprised that your friend isn't a grade-A dolt after years of knowing him. It's not the first time he's surprised you like this, and you really should alter your perception of him to account for it.

"That limb you're out on is a pretty fuckin' stable one. You could probably jump up and down on that limb, and it wouldn't even budge because it's so sturdy. The limb isn't shaking at all, even though it's windy as hell and a huge storm is coming, and you're hopping up and down on it. That limb is going nowhere,” you say, pretty sure your eyes didn't betray your surprise. You're also pretty sure that the amount of words you just said was far too many. Resorting to beating metaphors until they become the dead horse is kind of a defense mechanism.

"...I'm correct, right? And this isn't an ironic thing?"

"I guess over-extended metaphors are kind of an overused and tired ironic thing, but yes, it was the AR."

"...You were right in thinking that I wouldn't exactly be too fond of that answer," he says, eyes dropping the gaze they had been holding on you for the first time since you started this chat in what you can only assume is disappointment.

"I know. I was being an ass by taking advantage of the fact that you assumed privacy to further the AR."

"So every time we chatted, it was always listening?" he asks, eyes still cast downwards, probably at his keyboard or table.

"Most of the time, yes. I turned off its control over the audio for some of the more, uh..."

"Jesus Christmas, please don't finish that thought." Wide eyes dart up to you before looking to the side.

"Yeah."

"Well, then," Jake says. He crosses his arms resolutely, looking back at the screen. "I'm more than a little miffed that you put on this charade of putting the AR in the living room to make me feel better, when it was really still spying on us right under my nose."

"I'm sorry about that. Really."

"Do you have an explanation for your actions?"

"Yes, but do you want to hear it?"

Jake's crossed arms drop back down more neutrally to his sides, and he thinks about that for a moment. "I suppose I do."

"I don't think I should make excuses for my fuck up. I'll just convince you to not be upset with me, but I don't really deserve for you not to be upset with me."

"Just spit out your excuses, Strider."

“Okay. I guess the simple version is that I wanted it to act more like me, less hostile toward you when the two of you are communicating."

"Oh... And the less simple version?" Green eyes widen again behind his glasses, intrigued.

"The less simple version is the simple version, but with the addition that I also hate the AR, but I hate it for reasons which make me feel guilty about creating it, and even guiltier about denying it access to stimulus that it needs to evolve. I guess."

"And the reason you hate it?"

"Right, we kind of put that on the back burner earlier. Or I guess I got distracted. But it doesn't matter. Uh, the simple version of that is that I hate myself… Well, I actively and passively dislike certain large parts of myself, anyway.” You scratch your shoulder absentmindedly.

"Simple version hogwash! Can we just always assume that I'll ask about the less simple version?"

"I think the less simple version of that is too much to get into right now, but I'd be glad to later if you're really interested."

"I am really interested. And when else do we have all the time in the world?" he encourages.

"I guess you have a point, but what I was actually trying to say is that I don't... really want to talk about that shit. It's not that I don't want to be open with you or anything, because I actually have a huge fuckin' urge to just pour out my emotions and wear my heart on my sleeve like you do, but at the same time, I think doing that will probably change your opinion of me. Probably for the worse. I mean, much worse. And I feel like pulling you into my emotional horseshit is probably some kind of emotional manipulation. Similar to cult leaders… I reveal something about myself, and then you trust me and therefore like me more and need to stay with me, simultaneously feeling guilty or burdened… And... shit, this is all really hard to explain in words.”

“…Dirk, do you really feel that talking to someone about your emotions is a kind of manipulation? I think that’s… a really unhealthy way to live?” His eyebrows furrow in confusion, trying to understand your thoughts.

“Is it? I feel that sharing them would be unhealthier to other people, than it is unhealthy for me not to share them. Christ, that sentence was a train wreck.” You’re a train wreck right now. This conversation is serving to remind you why you choose not to engage with these emotions. Not externally, anyway.

“Well, I think this is probably the most I’ve learned about you in the whole time I’ve known you!”

“You never really asked.”

“…I never considered that you would be so willing to dispense information about your feelings like this. For some reason, I always thought it would be a battle to get through those stony defenses of yours.”

“Jake.”

“Yeah?”

“Have you realized that I like you?”

His cheeks flush slightly, and he suddenly becomes very interested in something on his desk. He’s quiet for a while.

“Don’t answer that. It was rhetorical. But my point is that… Fuck, can we go back to texting? It’s hard to say this while I’m looking at your face.”

He just shakes his head no subtly. Seeing Jake this quiet and borderline fucking demure is strange. What the hell is up with him.

“Yeah. The AR thing. Right. Okay then, I just wanted to say that I’m a person, and it would be really cool if you acknowledged that sometimes. I mean, asking me how my day was or how I'm feeling instead of just asking for uranium or something? And, I know that you don’t like me in the way I like you, and that this is a totally one-sided thing, but just… As a bro, if you would take an interest in me.”

Jake looks up, stunned by what you’ve just told him.

"You really think that I don't like you?" He latches on to the last part of your comment, leaning in close to the computer and looking at you with genuine shock and confusion.

"Not in the way I like you, yeah."

"You mean romantically?"

"Yes."

There's a pause. His face drops a little, and he sits back in his chair. You shift a little uncomfortably and look out the window, watching rolling storm clouds approach. You can see a few rogue strikes of lightning in the distance, and they look small and harmless, like lightning bolts drawn in a comic book.

“I..." Jake begins speaking again. You turn your head back to him, intently watching the monitor. You remember that you aren't wearing your shades and try to dial back the intensity a couple notches. You're unsure if it works. "Thought we were clear that we both had romantic feelings for each other,” he finishes.

Clear? Romantic feelings...for each other? The words bounce around in your head until they lose their meaning. The words barrel into and batter all of the other parts of your brain mercilessly into submission until all that's left is, "Oh."

"You couldn't extrapolate that from the multiple occasions that I've been nervous around you, or from the times that we've done things probably better left unsaid while webchatting?"

"It's understandable. I assumed that you were just a lonely dude in the middle of the ocean with nothing to do. Experimentation and romantic interest are different things. Also, extrapolation and explicitly stating are different things."

"What specifically lead you to the featherbrained conclusion that I wasn't interested in you?"

"Mainly the fact that I'm a guy. And that I thought you were interested in Jane."

Jake breaks through his frustration and manages to look resolved. He pounds one fist on the desk probably weaker than he intended, but still very dramatically. "Well, I, Jake English, am very much romantically vested in you, Dirk Strider!" he exclaims, eyebrows knit together, slightly red-faced, too close to the monitor. 

And just like that, after years of dodging the issue and making vague passes at each other, nothing is left up for extrapolation anymore. For a moment, your brain is laser focused on Jake. Synapses fire and keep returning back to the same damn smiling face, and your usually impossibly congested brain can only think about one thing. There's no AR, no Derse, no storm, no consequences, no guilt, no game or other friends, no plans or plots, just Jake English. Everything feels clear and endorphin-rich and... nice.

Until your asshole mouth opens up and says, "I guess it's settled then." That was the wrong thing to say. You want to force the words back into your mouth, but Jake surprisingly doesn't look upset with you for ruining the moment. Actually, for some reason, he’s absolutely beaming.

You're slightly confused at his reaction until you feel a less-than-familiar sensation tugging at your mouth muscles. You're smiling back. And it's not one of your occasional coy coolguy smiles. You glance at the small you in the corner of the video chatting screen to see a giant shit-eating grin on your face.

The two of you sit there, ogling each other and grinning like a pair of idiots for a while. Eventually, the emotional rush and the silence are rudely interrupted by a clap of thunder and and flash of bright white light.

Jake's smile fades slightly, and you want to capture it somehow before it does. You want to jump through the screen and be with him. You want to kiss him. You have about a million and five wants, and absolutely every single goddamn one of them is Jake English. The storm doesn't seem like it poses a threat. Well, maybe one threat.

"...Can we talk until the storm fucks up my internet?"

"Sounds like a lovely idea."

"Cool."

"...So, would I be right in saying that we're courting now?"

Yesyesyesyesyes. “Would you like to be courting now?”

His smile comes back. Fuck, he's too adorable. You want some of his endearing moxie. "Well, then, uh... boyfriend."

The word lets an army of what are probably the pinkest and spunkiest butterflies loose in your stomach. "What perks does being Jake English's boyfriend entail?" Another instance of instant regret. Words are usually kind of a thing that you have control over, but today, they're really working against you.

Angry booms of thunder in quick succession drown out Jake's first few words and try to disperse the butterflies in your stomach.

"--lay myself bare. Not to mention that contact with you takes priority over adventures, when they aren't life-threatening. What perks does being the boyfriend of Dirk Strider entail?"

"First, could you actually repeat the first few words of that? The tone of my answer is kind of dependent on it."

"Of what?"

"The part before laying yourself bare."

"I promise to be honest with you--laying myself bare? It's a common expression..." He looks a little flustered, and his eyes wander to the side of the computer screen to where his window is. "But I—"

"I see," the two of you speak at almost the same time, and you accidentally cut him off. "Shit, wait, continue. I mean, don't wait. Just continue."

"No, it was probably just some nonsensical gibberish. Go on."

"No, I want to hear your thing first."

Jake looks frustrated that you're forcing him to repeat himself regarding something that he seems to have regretted saying in the first place. His mouth turns downwards, and he adjusts his glasses dramatically like he does when he's pretending to feel awkward. "But I wouldn't mind doing that less metaphorically either," he finally says, meaninglessly tugging at his already very loose collar. His hands get fidgety when he's nervous.

Your room is boiling hot, but your face and neck start to feel like they're burning up. The fan feels like an arctic blast against your face. "I also wouldn't mind that," you say in what you're about 72% sure is not an even tone or pitch. But you also just pulled that percent out of your ass.

"Ha...haha.." Jake laughs nervously. "So, uh, those perks of dating you were...?"

"Perks? Probably—“ A boom loud enough to reverberate through your chest and make your ribcage rattle sends tremors through your apartment. It’s a weighty sound, and it almost feels as if an angry sea monster has come out of hiding and decided to have a hellish rumpus on your roof. More alarming than the sound or the feeling of the stilt-like girders keeping your apartment high and dry shaking is the sound of your web chatting app beeping at you and alerting you of a dropped call. Jesus fuck.

Your first guess is that lightning struck the antenna on your roof that somehow manages to catch the internet’s signal. Nature’s timing sure is shitty. As pressing as the current state of affairs—establishing and actually putting some kind of label on your relationship with Jake—is, going to the roof and subjecting yourself to a giant lightning rod in the middle of a storm isn’t really a logical option.

Your head is already spinning with the idea of unpacking thoughts layered on thoughts, stacked on locked briefcases, piled within shipping containers of fucking thoughts. You relax your neck muscles, letting your head fall back against the back of your chair and eyes fall shut. A second round of lightning hits, thunder tagging along shortly after like the loud friend that no one wants to be around. You close your eyes, feeling it rack your body once more with a sharp clap followed by a lingering rumbling bass. The wind picks up, whispering at your windows, begging for entrance. It’s about time to close all of the shutters before one of the glass panes shatters after being hit with a rogue seagull or some other small, innocent thing tossed around like a rag doll by the high speed winds. But you can’t bring yourself to get up just yet. Mostly because you know what you’ll see when you leave the room. What you’ll do.

You take a few more moments of reflection before lifting your head off of its resting place, opening your eyes, and standing up to go close some damn shutters. Your emotions and thoughts are too dense to pick just one right now, but the one at the forefront is definitely happiness. You’re fucking giddy—yes, you, giddy—about how it went with Jake. You fucked up the interaction plenty of times, but somehow it seemed to work out in the end. There are still some details to iron out, but it seems like the two of you are in some kind of relationship now. It feels like it was too easy after years of skirting the issue, toeing the line, keeping yourself—and failing to keep yourself—from saying anything that might reveal too much.

The second feeling, a close runner up to the happiness, is overwhelming guilt with pulling Jake into your shit. You’re pretty determined to keep him as out of it as possible from here on out, for the good of both of your sanity, but there’s something special about him that also makes you contradictorily want to spill your guts clumsily all over the floor at his feet. Something that makes you want to engage with things you don’t usually want to engage with.

One more crack of thunder, and it’s a miracle that none of the windows have broken yet. You kick yourself into gear, opening the windows and closing the shutters in your room manually before venturing out the door—squeak—and into your dark living room. It’s an uncomfortably moist blackness, except for two small red lights radiating from your shades on the couch. The wind barrages your windows, pleading more noisily than before. You decide to close the shutters in the rest of the house before doing the dreaded deed. You take your time, double checking that all of the shutters in the house are latched and secured; the howling overture of the wind is somewhat stifled behind the solid metal.

Eventually, you approach the couch once more and do what you foreshadowed yourself inevitably doing as you pick up your shades and put them back on. Guilt sinks its hooks into your stomach again. You’re a little surprised at the lack of messages after your last interaction.

TT: Hey.

TT: Hello, you have reached the autoresponder of DS. Please leave your message after the beep, and DS will get back to you as soon as possible.

TT: Christ, cut out the passive-aggressive answering machine shit.

TT: Hello, you have reached the autoresponder of DS. Please leave your message after the beep, and DS will get back to you as soon as possible.

TT: …

TT: Hello, you have reached the autoresponder of DS. Please leave your message after the beep, and DS will get back to you as soon as possible.

TT: Whatever.

You take off the shades before you can see the message that predictably comes next. You’re determined not to let this ruin the one time this month that your emotions have shifted to be less than 50% guilt-ridden. Your damn autoresponder shouldn’t be allowed to spoil your mood when it’s as good as it is now.

You leave the shades on your bedside table before padding back out of your room and up the stairs to the circuit breaker. It’s another thing you probably shouldn’t be touching during a storm, but you figure that you’ll give fucking with the wires a shot to try and rectify your internet connection. After screwing around with them for what seems like minutes, but is probably more like an hour with little success, you wander back to your room.

TT: Hello, you have reached the autoresponder of DS. Please leave your message after the beep, and DS will get back to you as soon as possible.

Unsurprisingly, you see the same message when you check your shades one last time before trying to get some sleep. You lie down in bed and finally let your body melt into the unpleasantly wettish sheets as fans continue to spout out warmish air.

You can’t sleep.

You try going to Derse for a bit again, but your thoughts are too impenetrable to let you leave your body.

You try tinkering with a small robot you’ve been working on at your table, but the wires, metal, and screws just don’t fit together like they should.

You try drawing, but it just seems promptless and pointless.

You try reading, but every word comes flooding back to you, and everything feels monotonous.

In between activities, you obsessively check the internet, but it’s still down. The wind and thunder outside sound uncomfortably tinny and far away through the storm shutters.

Nothing is working. Everything feels frustrating and played out, and your fixation with confirming your and Jake’s status is starting to edge out logic and make going to the roof to fix your internet antenna seem semi-feasible. Cementing something with him before he catches on to your needy bullshit takes top priority.

You flop down heavily onto your bed once more, and you notice Cal lying down next to you. In the heat of all of your other thoughts and stir crazy attempts to occupy yourself, it’s strange that you hadn’t even noticed him being so close.

“Hey, little dude,” you say, picking up one of his small, gloved hands in yours. He stares at you blankly, and the overwhelming familiarity of his blue eyes makes some kind of sentiment well up inside of you; even when it’s just you and Cal, you don’t let the emotion reach your face. No other options but to wait this typhoon out, you tuck the little guy against your body and try to unwind. You’re high-strung as fuck even when your childhood crush and only other possible romantic option on the planet doesn’t confess to you, so completely unwinding is out of the question, but Cal at least makes you feel at home. 

The comfort of his little cloth body close to yours gives you the freedom to stop running circles around yourself and the clarity to start making plans again. Staring into the velvet blackness of your room you contemplate what you should do when your internet inevitably starts working again, what you’ll say, how the AR factors in, what delivery pizza would be like, and what it would be like to have more options than just one poor bastard to throw yourself at, among other things. But, in the end, how much does any of it really matter? You usually try to avoid thoughts like this, but as if to spite the recent blip of happiness you’ve achieved in a world one emptiness, the same old thought races back to greet you, nipping at your ankles. That one fundamental truth that you let sit in a corner somewhere as you throw yourself headfirst into busyness.

You’re just a guy, alone, in the middle of the ocean.

**Author's Note:**

> didn't edit this as much as i would have liked to  
> thanks for reading!


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